"Whoever is good at solving difficulties does so before they arise" Sun Tzu
All this started well. At the end of January 2020, news were soothing, as only fake news allowed by the authorities can ultimately be. General Winter had frozen most of the Chinese viral offensive, apparently born from the crossbreeding of a pangolin skewer and a bat tartare, before it crossed the Great Wall of China. Enough to give me time to anticipate, on my derisory personal scale, the best and the worst of the spasms of our violent planet.
Let's start with the best.
After two months of winter blockade by the vile saboteurs of the transport Unions, many of us rejoice at the idea of a return to normal life with spring. "Give us back our lives" was our slogan, in response to the idiocies that the restless of the Union kennels barked as they paraded, all those endless weeks, in a Paris as paralyzed as a leftist brain.
And since the threat of the nasty "flu" doesn't make us scream, “my God! We're all going to die again! ”, we start making plans.
After all, we all had to die already: from the Millennium Bug in 2000; Anthrax in 2001; West Nile fever in 2002; SARS in 2003; avian influenza in 2005; the financial crisis in 2008; H1N1 influenza in 2009; the e.coli epidemic in 2011; the Mayan calendar in 2012; the North Korean missile crisis in 2013; melting ice in 2014; the Islamic State in 2015; and Zika and Ebola viruses in 2016.
But we are, almost all, still there. So why should we fall into alarmist hysteria?
Even more so the Taiwanese of democratic China demonstrate that the viral threat coming from Wuhan can be managed with much more efficiency and fewer deprivations than in dictatorial China.
So I dare to think that my government, the government of the 7th powerful economy in the world, will not fail to adopt equivalent or much better measures to protect the most fragile among us while keeping the country in working order.
“Covid19, my great Nation is going to smash you! Not even scared vulgar miasma made in China! #PlannedObsolescence”, I boast, as a typical Frenchiest, while discovering that the first cases of “Chinese flu” are landing among “Us”.
In my overconfidence crisis, I imagine the beautiful and reassuring Minister of Health, Madam Agnès Buzyn, as tranquilizing as a general anesthesia, opening, not her immaculate doctor's coat on a delicious mature nudity (I know you bunch of sex maniacs), but the strategic stock of a billion masks, while erecting (gang of perverts) the power of our wonderful health system that the whole world envies us (oh yes!). I even tell myself that the feather-duster face, that is the very verbose Minister of the Economy, will come out of his powerlessness (heap of depraved) by mobilizing the necessary industrial resources and by stimulating (oh yes! Again!) technological innovation.
A little less excited, I list the measures with which Taiwan or South Korea manage the viral danger. It is true that the porcelain neighbors of elephantine China, sometimes threatened in their vital interests by the upheavals of the Asian giant, have learned the lessons of the SARS crisis of 2003 and then of the H1N1 virus in 2009 which had struck the region. They can also read well enough between the lines of Chinese propaganda to be alarmed when necessary.
Here are the measures in question:
• Immediate control at the border of passengers coming from mainland China as soon as the Chinese authorities decree confinement. When you think about it, a border is like the skin, it should be used to filter out pathogenic threats.
• Population wide-testing with strict confinement of patients and digital tracking of infected people, something acceptable since it is not a generalized and constant tracking, infringing on freedoms, but targeted and provisional in view to avoid loss of human lives.
• Mask wearing, protecting the rest of the population from carriers not yet detected, according to the basic principle that the best way to protect yourself from a respiratory virus is to wear a respiratory mask. A protection which allows to maintain a semblance of normal life, and above all, the productive potential of the country almost intact.
• Mobilization of industrial and innovative infrastructures to produce the necessary for crisis management (masks, tests, medical and digital tools) and anticipate what will happen next.
I conclude that we will do the same but better because we are French, and if we still do not have shale-oil, we have no shortage of well-oiled ideas...
All to my reverie, I can already imagine myself, under the first solar caresses of spring, walking after work with my sweet Dulcinea on the banks of The Seine, a delicious ice cream from “The Berthillon House” in my hand, bought on the island of “La Cité”, before settling down in an ephemeral bar at the “Quai d'Orsay” to enjoy the Parisian dolce-vita.
I'm already rubbing my hands at this idea, seeing my fingers move from her beautiful sun-brown curls to her so soft neck; and I lick my chops, imagining her luscious tongue, scented with its mixture of light tobacco and "fisherman's friend" mint lozenges (#ProductPlacement), greedily sucked through my mouth, between two slices of tapenade drizzled with white beer.
Then the days pass, each day bringing its share of not as pleasantly springtime announcements as I hoped. The only things that are budding in this second half of February are the covid19 cases. These are emerging in various parts of the planet, like mushrooms on an old moldy stump that would serve as a world map, especially in Iran, in our Italy as dear as neighboring, but also here, at home, in France.
Besides there is something particularly sardonic about this outbreak. The virus seems to preferably target religious: Christian sect in South Korea, mullahs in Iran, evangelists in France, ultra-Orthodox in Israel, and football fans in Italy since the faithful of the second Italian religion seem to compete with the ‘stoup’s frogs’ (a french metaphor for bigots pillar-biters) who are going to contaminate themselves in the churches.
Ironically, one of the outbreak sites appears to have been directly imported by Military Services while the repatriation of the French expatriates from Wuhan to the “Oise” county. "If State didn't exist, who would infect you?” laughed my libertarians friends. In retrospect, we can say that this will only be the beginning of a long Way of the Cross for the French Statist Church.
Anyway, we’re laughing, we’re laughing, but deep down, all this leaves me a little circumspect.
I felt the first doubts dawning when the government, along with its servile and apathetic media commentators, began to announce:
• That the masks were useless for the common person but essential for the medical staff. I concluded that the latter ones must have more fragile bronchi than ours. No! I'm kidding!
• That the virus did not have a passport and that there was no point in closing the borders. Meanwhile, China's neighboring countries were demonstrating the opposite.
• That the Italians were less efficient than us. Finally, One day, we'll have to stop blaming the Italians for stealing us the 2006 FIFA World Cup. It was in the wake of Zidane's headbutt on Materrazi, that we should have launched a nuclear strike on Rome. Praying now that they all die from the Coronavirus fourteen years later is resentful. All the more so as our budget chasm will soon join theirs, we will very soon need our wop cousins to go and beg for money from our german cousins. Let's be pragmatic!
• That the viral storm would stop at our borders, like the "Chernobyl’s radiocative Cloud" in its time. After all "Bis Repetita Placent".
Doubts quickly repressed. What can I say, in the face of danger, the first reflexes are either to flee or to deny. In denial we tell ourselves that our government cannot be that bad. To play politics is to serve your country. With all the reports piling up, they must necessarily have a plan, a solution, a more sophisticated but just as effective method as the Taiwanese. "We're one of the world's greatest powers, damn it! We have the best health care system in the world, holy shit! Etc. "
I disillusioned quite quickly and, with the viral outbreak that was starting to set in the east of France, I had to learn that in my beautiful country, to govern is neither planning nor reacting accordingly, but rather to lie and spend "crazy money" to save government’s face, leaving us at the end the huge bill.
Nothing really surprising. After all, our president announced in his presidential campaign that the transformative revolutionary spirit of France, the only real French political genius, must win. Transform France, transform the world. "Because this is our project!" They should only be good in challenges of galactic magnitude. "Because this is our project!” To smash a nasty little pandemic should not be worthy of their magnificence. It does not push them to overtake. "Because this is our project!"
From press release to press release, by Lady
Silly-pet, the government spokeswoman, a circus freak wearing ridiculous
pajamas, whose remarks are relayed word for word by the medias as complacent as
they are subsidized, it’s obvious that: to govern is reduced to communicate,
comment, in short jabbering, while letting-do-anything-letting-
All the more that rumors of a masks, respirators and hospital beds shortage, in the “Grand Est” Region, are emerging. When you think that the president of the Grand Est Region happens to be a doctor, you tell yourself that history likes to be teasing.
So, rather than mild, spring promises to be boiling hot. While laughing with friends, we say to ourselves that it may herald the eight weeks of summer heatwave that will hit us in a few months.
Therefore, at the beginning of March, I began to anticipate the worst.
Oh I assure you, I'm not the kind of guy to panic violently. I much prefer to panic quietly, in an organized fashion.
Unlike the government which discovers what it needs as the crisis progresses, I list what is needed, taking into account the panic movements that happened in Asia, Australia, Italy. Above all, I take into account the fact that the human race can be everywhere extremely primitive and therefore predictable.
I also take into account the last lies of the government not announcing immediate sanitary confinement, or rather announcing on Norman-style, "maybe yes, maybe no", our Norman Prime Minister being a handsome specimen, since even his zebra beard now displays a Norman coloring, "maybe black, maybe white".
In fact, at the beginning of March, when rumors from the corridors of the administration and large companies announce a six-week lockdown from mid-March, the liars who govern us invite us to lead a normal life. The president sets an example by going to the theater. And the political class, all sides confused, drooling its thirst for mandates, expresses its haste to see the French defy the virus by going to vote for the municipal elections...
I wondered why the government was lying like this. Does he have several options? Does he really believe in what he's telling us as he goes along, kind of like he's thinking out loud? Things which are not reassuring. Because either the Government is lying to itself, which shows some incompetence, or cynically it takes us for idiots, relying on our blue surgeonfish memory (#TributeToDory) to make forget its successive lies.
And then, what is this mania to govern with the conditional language? No one teach them that you govern, either in the present or in the future, but never in the conditional. Bunch of apprentice rulers!
Anyway, no longer believing anything the Authorities tell us, I list the necessities for muggins, my wife and my old father.
I list and I buy in small batches every day. Then I stock up at my daddy's, and at home, enough packs of water, bags of rice, pasta, and canned fish, to hold out for a month. A bit ashamed, I am also building up a strategic stock of toilet paper.
I must now convince my tender and dear one to make similar arrangements.
I do not yet know where I will spend my lockdown, at her flat or at my home. For two years now, I crash more often at my sweet partner home than in my eagle's nest, or rather bluetit nest, located in the inner suburbs of Paris.
Her flat, a lovely sunny apartment with a balcony, is located an hour from my home, in a working-class Parisian district as I like them, socially and ethnically mixed but so Parisian. I go there almost every night. The pleasure of falling asleep against each other is such that any separation of more than 48 hours is distressing. I love to see her by my side when I wake up. No other sight of it delights me so much as her shining brown hair upon waking; her curls that I can stroke until I am exhausted. And her eyes! My God! Her eyes; blue eyes of which I contemplate in amazement every setting and every rising. But also, the most effective of all the "blue pills"; I barely gulp them down with my eyes that I got a hard-on.
“Yes, I am deeply in love with my wife, so what! I know, it's rare! But that's not my problem! It’s yours! Neener-neener-neener!". When I think of it, that I had to wait 45 years for all the sentimentalities I have always believed in, explode in my soul and finally take flesh. To finally understand what “finding your other half” means; this soul mate who, far from diminishing you, allows you to discover yourself completely, to be completely you, everything you expected to be. To be born to love like this. It's like that! My wife has become all my spring days, all the flowers in my eyes each time we reunite. "Our"; "We". I love so much to say the word "We" since "Us".
My chickadee nest does, however, have the advantage of being right next to my 82-year-old father's flat, that I will need to assist, doing the shopping, the housework, dealing with invoices etc. Usually I visit him every other day, when I leave the office nearby.
However, in the event of a growing epidemic and confinement, I will have to limit my visits to avoid bringing back germs to my father, while making myself available whenever necessary. I lost my mother owing to a stomach hurricane cancer last winter in Portugal, and I already have enough difficulty to mourn despite the distance I had with my progenitor. So I don't wanna lose my father, whom I am close to. This mere possibility worries me sick. I end up telling myself that I will decide at the last moment, depending on the conditions of the confinement. In the event of severe travel restrictions, I will opt for my landmark.
I tell my wife about my feelings. She agrees with me. Caressing my face, she said, "you'll see and decide accordingly."
For her part, my Darling must plan for the arrival of her two teenage daughters, in alternate custody, a week with their father, a week with her. How will it be during the lockdown? The two of us, lovingly confined, it’s sure to be delicious, but with two more teenage girls, it’s likely to get out of hand. Not that her daughters are not kind, on the contrary. Chacha the eldest and Titou the younger, are kids with the adorable sides of their mother, but they are nonetheless teenagers with tensions related to their age and those specific to their generation of egocentrics accustomed to all kinds of things facilities. How will they live in lockdown with us. In short, all this does not go without raising some concerns to be taken into account.
Parents and children. The forties are the blessed age when, while feeling so much freer than any of the previous ages, we forget ourselves enough to worry primarily about our parents and children.
And God knows I worry for my own children. They live with their mother in Brittany County, not far from the Morbihan viral cluster which draws attention about it for a few days and which torments them. I already spend every day mourning their distance and absence. But now, worrying remotely is real moral torture. One of the father’s function is to protect and reassure. But not being around them to do so is emotionally hard enough to bear. Furthermore, I had planned to visit them at the end of March. Just like they had to come to my house for the Easter school holidays. I feel this is all going to fall flat with a lockdown.
I literally enraged before letting go and taking a deep breath. After all, since my divorce from their slightly unstable mother, I have often told them that living is about adapting to change. "Life is only movement" as Montaigne said, or more recently Doctor Gerry Lane in the movie "World War Z". This reference often makes them laugh, "You're right, dad, we're not zombies." I reassure myself by telling me that we will call each other more often. We'll find ways to keep in touch and laugh together until we can kiss each other again.
While waiting to decide, I must therefore convince my Sweetheart to store toilet rolls.
She grants my request by one of her usual "what!", then she continues mockingly, throwing me a "but you only think about ass, good heavens!". I retort, laughing “Yes! I only think about yours! But in this case, it's more about ass paper!"
"Oh no! I refuse to enter into this logic of siege, to anticipate what might be missing because of a possible collective hysteria. I am a Parisian lady, an Intramural, and in Paris, not only anything has never missed, but I bet you that we will not miss anything", she laughs before continuing.
"And then, where do you want me to store in my three-room apartment, with a Parisian apartment fridge worthy of a mini-bar? It is made to contain a week of food, no more! At last, it annoys me to do like the crowd. I'm not going to spar over cans of tuna on the shelves! I have a dignity!"
I tell her that's one of the reasons I love her so much, but we'll find, all the same, a place for some small tactical stocks that I'll be building up quietly in the next few days. To govern one's house, like a country, is to plan.
A week later, it is almost done.
When I learned that ibuprofen would be at the origin of the hospitalization of young patients with Covid and that the Advil would be prohibited, the acetaminophen being to be preferred, I tell myself that all our idiots will soon rush to pharmacies to raid the shelves of Tylenol. The idiot being predictable at least 48 hours in advance, I decide to plan two boxes each in case, taking them quietly, two packs here, two packs there, just to leave some to the others.
The next day, Tuesday March 10, when I leave the office, I realize that I did not take some Tylenol for my father. So I go into a pharmacy to buy him two boxes. In front of me, in the queue, is obviously a suburban bimbo with its stroller. When her turn comes, she orders a batch of nasal serums for the baby as well as eight boxes of Tylenol, telling the pharmacist "it is better to have some in reserve, it can be useful", all accompanied by small worried tremolos in the voice. The pharmacist, without batting an eyelid, wraps the eight boxes of medication, accompanying her gesture with a ruminating movement of the jaw.
My eyes widen as I say to myself, these people are as silly as the pharmacist is unable to put a stop to it. There are only two Tylenol boxes on the shelf. The suburban primate leaves. It's my turn. Ashamed to take the last two boxes of pills, I ask her for only one, telling myself that I will buy another elsewhere. The apothecary hands me the box saying "I must reorder it, it's going quickly today, I don't understand why", all while offering me the liveliness of the eye glow of a Charolais heifer. I take the tylenol for my dad and say "thank you" while wanting to drop a "you're a little dumb too, aren't you?".
Before I get to my old dad, I will find a drugstore where I will buy the second box. Another colorfully episode.
The pharmacy close to my dad's home has organized things well. They traced the ground on the sidewalk as well as inside the establishment, ensuring a physical distance of two meters between each client.
When I arrive, two people are in front of me. I have no one behind me for a minute. Then three people arrive. The last two follow the markings, but the one just behind me seems more drawn to my ass than to the need to keep one's distance. Add to that proximity, the heavy breathing of someone who has run. His hot breath hits the back of my neck.
The person in question is a tall African woman looking like Aya Nakamura, the Malian pop singer who is making a splash, to an audience made up of public school wastes, with her clips full of images made up to the last degree, and songs written in a suburban pidgin based on rumblings clearly indicating that her poop music can be listened to more with the ass than with the head.
I put her need to stick me, on my animal magnetism or on my muscular rump of Babtou (white-man in our french afro-suburban slang) with a twist of Bantu blood, which reminds her, perhaps, a familiar tribal allure mixed with some white exoticism. Except that now, my lack of celibacy and the sanitary climate do not lend to it. So I have anything but the urge to dance cloosely during an improvised Covid-party.
One of the customers in front having been served, a floor marking emerges in front of me. I move forward two meters, shaking off that close proximity as embarrassing as inappropriate. It wasn't counting on the mimicry of this cousin. She sticks me again so closely that I almost have her mist on the inside of my glasses.
“My goodness! Perhaps, she's misting me with coronavirus! This is not good at all!” I said to myself, kissing my teeth like an angry African, and thinking of the safety of my relatives as well as the National Security (#LOL).
Turning to this piece of tape which refuses to get off my back, I allow myself to tell her, in a benevolent but firm tone: “Madame, don't see any offense, but if I want to maintain a certain physical distance, with respect markings on the ground, as well as the preventive measures, it is for some good reasons”.
The reaction of this sticky paper is somewhat disconcerting. My injunction in a language, obviously a little too formal, leaves her quiet, in what looks like a real standing knockout, hands curled up on her chest, chin tilted to the side, and her gaze as dull as that of a carp remained too long on the stall of a fishmonger.
I really want to say her "don't shock yourself like this" but I'm afraid I will cause her a stroke. "Maybe I should have punctuated my sentence with one 'Yo' or two", I said to myself. I admonish myself by calling me "big bully", when the pharmacist, who has obviously witnessed the scene out of the corner of his eye, invites me to join him at the store checkout.
"Please, sir, come, it's your turn now", he said with a knowing smile that illuminates the delicacy of his Ethiopian facial features and whose white medical gown emphasizes the gracefulness of his African elven silhouette.
I join him, buy my box of Tylenol, and leave, throwing, a bit worried, a last look at the lady still frozen like a pillar of salt.
A statue with athletic shapes highlighted by a
tight-fitting black leatherette jumpsuit and a white plush vest that covers her
shoulders. A detail narrowly fails to make me burst out laughing. She wears
white socks, matching the waistcoat, in black slides with two vamp straps
covered in ridiculous white synthetic fur. "At least it's all right", I chuckle inwardly. The
swimming-pool-sandals-&-white-
Her gaze remains strangely frozen. Perhaps, she tells herself that she has just been, for the umpteenth time, the victim of an infamous racist attack. Unless she is "in her behavior" as Aya Nakamura sings cryptically, or ruminates on the " seum" (slang: a disarray mixed with acrimony) that my remark will have aroused in her.
While meditating on the psychological impact of sentences with subordonate clauses, I forget about this ready-to-wear dummy for suburbs, and say to myself "Mission accomplished!" I have my father's two boxes of Tylenol.
In the days that followed, as was to be expected, stockouts of Tylenol were to be deplored. The government, which waited for the shortage to react, decided to relocate the production of this drug to France in order to guarantee the health independence of our great and old nation.
Land of snooty morons !
